


I Will Protect Them

by eawen_penallion



Series: The Andrann Series - borne from 'Glorfindel Unleashed' [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Loss, M/M, Multi, Protectiveness, Third Age, Threesome - F/M/M, Tragedy, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eawen_penallion/pseuds/eawen_penallion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Household of Lord Elrond faces a tragedy that affects its inhabitants in many different ways.</p>
<p>The fourth story in the Andrann series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Protect Them

T.A.2510 , Imladris

 

'They are my gwedeir, and none may pass me - I will protect them'

 

****

 

The quiet peace that usually permeated the cool corridors of the Last Homely House was a comforting peace, a gentle peace that soothed a troubled soul or reassured an anxious edhel. But this day the silence was troubled and anxious, sorrowful and imbued with deep mourning. Stifled and muted sobs echoed sadly from behind closed doors akin to the one that Andrann was guarding. Though 'guarding' was a misnomer, for to guard implies that the guardian is on alert, standing at attention - armed and ready to bar against unwanted intrusion, by force if required.

Andrann - captain of the famed warriors of Imladris, elleth of great renown, highly trained and skilled in many forms of combat - sat slumped against the hard wall outside the occupied chamber. Her knees were drawn high against her chest and her arms wrapped about them as if she had retreated into a world of her own. She pressed her forehead against her knees, trying to use the painful pressure to subdue a deeper pain...

 

***

 

The party had returned earlier that day, having travelled through the night without stopping for any rest or refreshment. The principals had dismounted in stricken silence, and had dispersed immediately to their quarters without a backward glance to the gathered elves who had awaited them in respectful quietude.

Andrann had been at the front of the waiting crowd and had stepped forward to hold the head of her lord's steaming horse. Her solicitude went unacknowledged and an inquiring glance to her immediate superior brought forth only a warning shake of golden mane.

Her gwedeir had followed their father and sister into the Last Homely House in unblinking procession.

A discreet signal to her warriors resulted in a gentle clearing of the courtyard of elves and beasts, the stable boys fulfilling their duties with uncustomary discretion and quiet murmuring. Andrann looked once more at the shadowed doorway through which the family had disappeared. Closing her eyes, the elleth took a deep breath and concentrated on calming her mind as Elladan had taught her.

Through many weeks of seemingly fruitless experimentation they had finally managed to induce in the warrior woman a state of meditation which would allow her to sense her gwedeir in a limited way. The mindtouch was fragile, admitting only the briefest brush against the active mind where the barest hint of a person's feelings lay upon the surface.

At the edges of her consciousness she could now feel them. Colours of darkness reflecting shuttered souls; tints of shadowed mauves, swathes of swirling anger, of red frustration. Hot spears of need - to submerge and grind that disabling grief in the burning fires of union.

The briefest of touches - yet the psychic heat seared her mind as her body lurched with a rampant sexuality that faded in moments. Andrann had fought to regain her composure, inhaling deep draughts of soothing air. Once she had regained some small amount of calm, the elleth glanced about the empty courtyard, satisfied that all was proceeding as it ought.

With a final nod of her head, the captain of Imladris marched inside the Last Homely House, intent upon fulfilling her self-imposed duty.

 

****

 

'They are my gwedeir, and none may pass me - I will protect them'

 

****

 

The quiet sobs of woe permeating softly through the concealing walls had lessened over time, diminishing in phase with the dwindling sun. Still Andrann held to her vigil, lost in the internal echoes of her memories. Aching limbs, protesting at the long and cramped inactivity, were ignored and subsumed through centuries of training. Although a tiny portion of her attention was alert for possible intrusion the elleth was otherwise lost in introspection...

 

****

 

'They are my gwedeir, and none may pass me - I will protect them'

 

****

 

Shadows and darkness, screams and despairing moans. A terrible, unrelenting stench invaded the nostrils as the elven kin fought the enemy in the confinement of narrow corridors and chambers.

The whistle of arrows speeding through the cold night air, the unremitting thud of steel tip embedding into yielding flesh compounded with the rush of escaping air explosively exiting the target thorax. The clatter of metal weapon dropping to the ground from suddenly nerveless grasp.

Seeking cries reverberated off rough-carved walls as children sought their begetter.

"Nana!"

Answering whispers, transported by breathy undulations of the air gave hope of reunion of parent and child. Fierce screeches from black throats spoke of resistance to that brief hope.

Finely-crafted elven swords clashed against crudely-wrought orcish blades, each thrust bringing the avenging assailants closer to their goal.

Hidden, hiding, bereft, alone. Hands that clasped over assaulted ears, desperately trying to block out all hopeless cries, all hopeless thoughts. The image of pillage, rape, despoiled flesh and empty soul seared upon a too-young mind. Tears that fell unheeded; prayers that went unanswered.

The discovery of a battered body, chest rising in miniscule amounts as life hung by the slenderest of threads. The helpless cry of an impotent offspring faced with the ruin of a beloved mother, ripped from an anguished throat. A cry that echoed through empty passages, drowning the groans of sexual completion that emanated from the chamber within. From her gwedeir.

 

****

 

'They are my gwedeir, and none may pass me - I will protect them'

 

****

 

Andrann did not hear the door opening, or the quiet footsteps approaching down the corridor. She barely registered the elf who crouched beside her, stroking her tear-stained cheek; nor the second ellon who knelt beside him, speaking her name gently but firmly; not even the third, who clenched fiercely at the door frame as he stood in empathic agony.

"Andrann, meleth... Look at me, sweet one. Andrann, please - weep no more tears for us. Our mother is gone to a better place - to Aman - to rest and be healed in Nienna's gentle arms. Your sorrow hurts us and compounds our own."

The second voice then spoke to Elladan - the soothing voice of her commander. His deep tenor was soft and comforting, but he spoke not to her.

"Elladan, your sworn-sister weeps for you, but she also weeps for herself. Andrann is an orphan of Eregion, a witness to the atrocities there - to her own parents' death. Her mother... she was despoiled by orcs. Andrann witnessed her ruin and death. Your father once spoke to me of her later rescue from the ruins of the city, where she and a handful of elflings were found cowering in the stench of the middens. The foul aromas had hidden them from orcish noses."

Glorfindel paused, stroking the elleth's soft hair.

"Even then the child Andrann took her duty seriously. She had appointed herself as the guardian of the elfling refugees, and protected them until assured by Elrond and Celeborn that they were safe." He looked with sympathy down at the crumpled form that was his capable captain. "As far as Elrond knows, Andrann has never before wept for her dead parents."

"But - but why now? Why not when our mother was hurt? Why did she not weep for her own kin then? Mother's cries... they echoed in these halls. We wept then too - why did she not?"

Glorfindel lifted his compassionate eyes first to Elrohir then to his brother, seeing within the adults the children he had once held upon his knee.

"Because then," he said softly, "- then there was still hope. In the hope of Celebrían's recovery lay a salve to her soul. Within the confines of duty she found distraction - within the confine of your mother's rooms she saw a possibility of redemption. She blames herself for her mother's death, because to give her children a chance of life, Andrann's mother revealed herself to the orcs and thus turned their eyes away from the elflings' hiding place."

Elladan winced, for the seneschal's words conveyed an image that he could envisage only too well.

"Andrann was but a child - that she survived at all was a miracle. She should not blame herself for something over which she had no control."

Glorfindel nodded, then stretched out his hands to take Elladan's.

"A fact that you would do well to remember also." He looked intently at Elrohir too. "Both of you."

Turning back to the trembling elleth, he cupped her chin with his broad hand and raised it until her tear-soaked eyes met azure blue.

"Meldis, go with your gwedeir and seek comfort in their arms, even as they need your love to comfort them."

Her voice was soft but harsh, product of a larynx tortured with ancient grief and swollen with sorrow.

"They are my gwedeir, and none may pass me - I will protect them."

Glorfindel nodded in understanding of her duty, of her dilemma.

"As my bereth guards Elrond and Arwen, so I will stand guard for you all." He caught at her hands. "Go now, dear warrior. Cast off your role as protector and embrace your position as a lover."

Andrann looked about her, seeing now the brothers in their careless attire, their silk robes loosely tied over their otherwise naked frames. Their faces showed clearly of their own grief; their pleading eyes spoke of their need to find solace in her touch. The ache that had lodged so firmly in her chest now broke forth, even as a bubble of soap explodes in a shower of droplets that spatter the ground below. Throwing herself into the open arms of her kneeling - and nearest - lover, she allowed her long-suppressed pain to break forth in an anguished wail.

"Ell! Oh, El!"

Elladan wrapped his arms tightly about the crying elleth, tangling one hand into the silken locks of unbound hair even as he pressed his mouth to her tresses, murmuring softly.

"Meleth, meleth nín," he whispered, an endearment echoed by his twin as Elrohir in turn knelt to embrace them both.

"My brother. Our sister. Our joy."

With gentle encouragement they raised her up, taking her hands in theirs and guiding her into the sheltering chamber. The heavy door closed shut behind them, excluding the world once more.

Glorfindel sighed and paused for a moment before assuming the stance of a sentinel, his head bowed in reverent prayer. And in his mind, even as he grieved for the departure of Celebrían - wife of Elrond and mother of Elrohir and Elladan and Arwen - he heard the screams of the victims of the Ages. Of the soldiers on the Plain of Morannon; of the duped elves of Eregion; of the trapped citizens of Gondolin; and of the memories of the reverberating cries of a bereft youth kneeling upon the high cliffs of Cirith Thoronath - reaching for and screaming as his beloved lord fell to a fiery in the fiery embrace of a balrog of Morgoth.

From beneath the golden lashes of Glorfindel of Gondolin a tear emerged - and he wept.

**Author's Note:**

> Elvish:
> 
> edhel - elf (sing.)  
> gwedeir - sworn brothers  
> elleth - female elf (sing.)  
> Nana - mother  
> meleth - love, beloved (noun)  
> Meldis - sister  
> bereth - spouse  
> meleth nín - my love


End file.
